Author: Jim Spiegel

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To the God Who Might Be There

By Jim Spiegel

During my first year of graduate school I went through a brief crisis of faith, largely due to the influence of a particular professor who was especially adamant in his religious skepticism.  In fact, you might say he was—pardon the oxymoron—a dogmatic skeptic.  After a few weeks in his class I found myself struggling with doubts of my own and entertaining the thought that my Christian commitment was based on a lie.  What if, after all, God did not exist?  I recall one evening as I went to pray sensing the potential absurdity of what I was about to do—quietly thanking and praising a fictitious deity, and making assorted requests to someone who was not there.  The usual feeling of God’s presence, an ineffable intuition that was reliable until then, was gone.  What to do?  I suppose I could have allowed that feeling, or the lack thereof, to dictate a decision not to pray at all.  But as I sat there I tried to make a rational assessment of the situation.  If there really is no God, I wondered, then what harm will it do to pray?  At worst, I mutter to myself for a few minutes and perhaps benefit from the meditative discipline involved in the process.  On the other hand, if God is real, despite my failure to sense his presence, then he will hear my prayers and perhaps respond to my pleas to make his presence known to me again as before.  And perhaps he will reward me by giving me more assurance than ever that he is real since my prayers in that state would be an even greater act of faith than my usual prayers prompted by the confidence that he exists.  I’m not sure how lucid this reasoning was, but that was my thought process.

So I prayed.  I prayed then and several other times during that period to the God who might be there.  And as the days went by, my assurance of God’s existence did return—and yes, stronger than ever.  Would that confidence have returned eventually had I ceased praying?  I don’t know.  But I’m glad I did it, since I believe that not only did God hear those prayers but it was also a good exercise in devotional perseverance.  The Scriptures tell us that God rewards those who earnestly seek him, and this would seem to apply just as much to the person who doubts his existence as to the person who is confident that he is real but simply wants to learn more about him or grow closer to him.

Some would label this approach to finding God a “devotional experiment.”  If you are agnostic or even a less-than-dogmatic atheist, and you recognize at least the possibility that God exists, then try praying to the God who might be there.  You never know what you might discover as a result.

As I’ve been thinking about this lately, I quite coincidentally stumbled upon an upcoming article in the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion by philosopher T. J. Mawson (who teaches at St. Peter’s College in Oxford) in which he argues that atheists have an epistemic obligation to pray that God would help them to stop being atheists.  I have not read the article (because it’s not yet available in print and I don’t have an electronic subscription to the journal), but it appears that Mawson’s claim is that given the mere possibility of God’s existence and the monumental significance of his existence and our devotion to him, if he does exist, then one should invite God to correct one’s misimpression that he does not exist.  Thus, says Mawson, atheists should pray that God will put an end to their religious unbelief.  An arresting thought, indeed.  And, no doubt, it will be irksome to some atheists.  Yet perhaps there are some who would follow Mawson’s counsel and dare to pray, as I did, to the God who might be there.

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Pray for an Atheist — Interviews and Updates

By Jim Spiegel

The last few days have been very busy for me, as I was interviewed for eleven different radio programs about my book and the “Pray for an Atheist” campaign on Facebook.  You can listen to my interview with Chris Arnzen on the Iron Sharpens Iron program, which is broadcast in New York City.  (Click on the MP3 link for March 30.)

Also, Troy Anderson has written a fine story for To the Source about the PFA campaign, which you can check out here.

As for the Pray for an Atheist page, it’s busier than ever, with over 1500 fans and new posts every minute.  Please get in the action and commit to praying for an atheist (or several of them) daily.  (If you are an atheist, then why not pray to the God who “might” be there?  More on this approach in my next post.)

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An Atheist Meets God

By Jim Spiegel

Anyone familiar with the philosophical history of atheism knows that twentieth century British scholar A. J. Ayer is one of the most prominent atheists of the modern period.  He was a leading figure in the movement known as Logical Positivism, and his Language, Truth, and Logic is one of the definitive statements of this radical empiricist orientation.  Like other positivists, Ayer did not merely reject theism as false but insisted that the claim that there is a God is cognitively meaningless.  (He made the same claim about moral statements, by the way, which he claimed to be nothing more than expressions of emotion.)

Toward the end of his life, Ayer had a near death experience, the content of which he reported in his fascinating essay “What I Saw When I Was Dead.”  Upon its publication, many were surprised to learn that, despite this seemingly supernatural experience, Ayer did not budge from his atheism but remained convinced that there is no God.  Indeed, for a long time after reading the essay, I was puzzled over this.

But twelve years later Ayer’s attending physician, Dr. Jeremy George, revealed that Ayer might not have been completely forthcoming about his experience and the actual conclusion he drew from it.  Dr. George claimed that Ayer confided to him, “I saw a divine being.”  Then Ayer added, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to revise all my various books and opinions.”  Well, now that’s quite a confession.  If true, Ayer’s change of mind would certainly rival that of Antony Flew in terms of significance.  Indeed, if Flew had a challenger in the twentieth century as the “the world’s most notorious atheist” (as the subtitle of Flew’s recent book tags him), Ayer is probably it.

But is Dr. George’s account to be trusted?  Read Peter Foges’ recent essay in Lapham’s Quarterly, entitled “An Atheist Meets the Masters of the Universe”, and judge for yourself.  I would also recommend reading all of the comments that follow.  It’s an instructive conversation that well illustrates the fundamental differences in outlook between theists and atheists.

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The “Pray for an Atheist” Campaign

By Jim Spiegel

Several folks, including myself, have launched a Facebook page entitled Pray for an Atheist.  As you may know, April 1 has been celebrated in the past as “National Atheists Day,” and in the first week of April is held the American Atheists National Convention.  So we thought it would be a good idea to encourage Christians to commit to praying for atheists for the entire month of April.  If you would like to get involved, please become a “fan” of the page.

As you’ll see on the page, however, a number of atheists are strongly objecting to the idea that Christians are praying for them.  As one atheist put it, “if you’re going to pray for me and my ilk, that is quite disrespectful.”  And another said, “I personally find it offensive if anybody wants to pray for me.”  There have been many other expressions of disapproval, some profane and vulgar (which have been deleted).

I can’t help but think—as some people have pointed out—that all of this vitriol confirms the thesis of my book.  Atheists simply have no reason to object to our praying for them, especially since, given our worldview, it is an act of love.  After all, if God does exist, then it would be an enormous benefit to atheists if they come to believe this.  Moreover, as a Christian, it would be profoundly hypocritical of me to believe that prayer could be effectual in helping others to find redemption in Christ and yet not pray for unbelievers.

Therefore, I would ask atheists to respect my right to do what I want in the privacy of my own home, as I kneel in prayer on their behalf.

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God Judges Animals?

By Jim Spiegel

Amy and I have practiced what we call a “cruelty-free diet” for more than a decade.  We do this out of a conviction that it’s the least we can do to avoid moral complicity with the factory farming system in our country, which is so horribly inhumane to cows, pigs, and chickens.  (I defy anyone to see what goes on in those places and not be disturbed by the extreme cruelty of it all.)  We’re hardly radicals, but the little we do is aimed at honoring what we regard as a biblical duty of compassion toward animals.

There are numerous Scriptural passages that speak to the moral significance of our treatment of animals.  There is a biblical duty of compassion for animals, and this has implications for the dinner table as well as the backyard.  (See, for example, Exod. 23:12, Deut. 25:4, Psalm 50:10-11, Psalm 104, and Prov. 12:10.)

Recently, as I’ve been reading through the book of Genesis, a passage jumped out at me that I had overlooked before—Genesis 9:5.  Amazingly, this verse refers to the fact that animals themselves will be judged.  Getting a running start from verse 4, it reads like this:

“You must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.  And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting.  I will demand an accounting from every animal.  And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man” [my italics]  

That’s the New International Version of the Bible.  Several other translations instead refer to animals giving a “reckoning,” and some use the term “punish.”  But what is consistent in each translation I’ve seen is a sense of something like moral culpability and judgment.  Now some folks could read too much into this and erroneously infer that animals are on the same moral plane as humans.  Clearly, we can’t run to that extreme given the unique standing of human beings as divine image bearers (cf. Gen. 1:27).  Still, it seems noteworthy that God will judge animals in this regard (and that God would make special note of this in Scripture).  This appears to be one more biblical reinforcement of the moral significance of animals.

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Hell and the Undermining of Heavenly Happiness

By Jim Spiegel

Lately, I’ve been pondering some of Thomas Talbott’s arguments against the traditional doctrine of hell (in his 1990 Faith and Philosophy essay “The Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment”).  He makes many interesting points, both in criticism of eternal conscious torment and in defense of universalism.  One of the things he discusses is how damnation of the lost will affect those who go to heaven.  I’m sure that most Christians have wondered how we could be truly happy in heaven if we knew that some of our loved ones were suffering the agonies of hell.  Talbott addresses a few popular lines of response to this problem.

First, some argue that when we get to heaven we will be see the justice in God’s damnation of our loved ones, so it won’t cause us sorrow or otherwise undermine our happiness.  But Talbott notes that seeing the justice in our loved ones’ punishment would not eliminate the sadness of their plight.  After all, even when our loved ones suffer just punishment in this life, we are still reasonably sorrowful about it.  Moreover, we could still regret that God did not move in the hearts of our loved ones to prompt repentance in them as he did those of us who are redeemed.

A second way of dealing with this problem is to propose that God will change our attitude towards our lost loved ones.  In short, God will turn our love for them into hatred.  We will despise them for their wickedness, just as God does (assuming that God truly hates those he damns, as the traditional view seems to entail). This approach is even more problematic, however, since (1) God commands us to love others, even our enemies, and (2) our love for those closest to us is so tied up with who we are that to so dramatically change such attitudes and affections would be to fundamentally alter one’s character.

So if these lines of response are of no help in explaining how we could be happy in heaven despite the on-going agonies of some of our loved ones, then what alternative explanation is more promising?  If there are no better approaches, then chalk this up as another point against the doctrine of eternal conscious torment.  

Talbott recognizes that affirming the eventual annihilation of the damned does circumvent this problem, which is somewhat of a relief to me, as a conditional immortalist.  Still, his analysis left me wondering whether even conditional immortalism supplies a sufficient shield against this problem.  After all, might we not also be saddened that some of our loved ones were destroyed and that we will never see them again?  This, too, appears to undermine our heavenly happiness.  Clearly, the problem is not as severe for conditional immortalism as it is for the traditional view of hell.  Given conditionalism, at least the sufferings of your loved ones will eventually end.  Not so for the traditionalist, whose loved ones’ unspeakable agony will continue for eternity.

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Solving the Euthyphro Problem

By Jim Spiegel

Among the issues debated between theists and atheists is the question of God’s relation to ethics.  Many theists, including myself, maintain that without God there is no foundation for ethics.  Not only does atheism fail to provide any ultimate motivation to live virtuously but the very concept of moral goodness is undermined.  Atheists, of course, beg to differ, insisting that the concept of goodness can be adequately understood in terms of natural facts about the world, such as pleasure or human survival.  And as for moral motivation, most atheists seem to maintain that the goal of making this life the best it can be provides sufficient grounds for good behavior.

Not only do atheists (typically) maintain that ethics (both the concept of the good and the incentive to live rightly) is possible without God, they also often argue that God actually undermines ethics.  That is, they claim, ethical theories that appeal to God are problematic at best and incoherent at worst.  And it’s interesting to see how often they trot out a 2500-year-old argument, originating with Socrates (who, ironically enough, was himself a theist).  The argument, commonly known as the “Euthyphro dilemma,” originally took this form:  Do the gods love piety because it is pious, or is something pious because the gods love it?”  Transposed into the context of a theistic (rather than polytheistic) divine command ethic, the dilemma looks like this:

1. Does God command X because it is good

               or

2. Is X good because God commands it?

 The question might appear trifling, but it does have some bite to it.  If we opt for (1), then something besides God’s commanding a behavior makes it good.  That is, the standard for goodness is not God’s commands, which seems to flout the notion that God is the foundation of ethics.  On the other hand, if we go with option (2), then this prompts the question why God commanded X, so it is really no answer at all.  Now, one could insist that this “why” question admits of no answer and that God’s commands are ultimately arbitrary.  But, then, this implies that God could just as well have commanded that we rape, murder, and steal from one another and, consequently, such behaviors would have been just as moral as kindness, compassion, and generosity are now.  This seems absurd, so option (2) is no more appealing than option (1).

The theist appears to be stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place here—specifically the options of admitting either that God is not the foundation of ethics or that God’s commands are arbitrary.   Is there a way out for the theist who insists that God is foundational to—or in any way crucially related to—ethics?  Many atheists and agnostics believe this argument to be devastating.  But, really, the solution is quite simple (as evidenced by the fact that in every one of my philosophy classes in which this argument is discussed some student solves the riddle on his or her own, or else with just a little Socratic leading by yours truly).  Can you figure it out?  See if you can do so before reading the next paragraph.

The best response—as I see it anyway—is to take the approach of Thomas Aquinas, among many others, and go with option (1) but to qualify this in an important way.  Yes, God commands what he does because those things are good, but the standard for goodness is not something external to God.  Rather, the divine nature is the moral standard.  It is the character of God which determines how God commands us to behave.  This explains why Scripture often uses the term “godly” and “godliness” as synonyms for moral goodness or piety.  They are one and the same thing.  To be moral is to reflect the moral nature of God.  So each divine command is essentially a specific application of the general command to morally imitate God.  Moreover, given this approach, divine commands are not properly conceived as the source of goodness but rather they serve the function of making the standard of goodness known.  That is, the role of divine commands is epistemological, whereas God’s character is the ontological ground of ethics.

Of course, atheists and many others will object that defining moral goodness in terms of the divine nature begs the question, Why call God’s nature good?  But this question could be asked about any proposed ultimate standard for ethics (e.g., pleasure, human survival, universalizability, etc.).  If there is indeed a moral standard, then its goodness must be fundamental, absolute, and inexplicable.  The nature of God is far superior to any alternative proposal because God is a being, not a mere concept or ideal.  Moreover, this Thomistic approach has the additional virtue of paralleling the foundation of ethics to that in theistic ontology and epistemology, where we understand God to be the ground of all being and of all rationality, respectively.  (I would even extend this, perhaps more controversially, to the realm of aesthetics, and propose that God is the ground of all beauty.)  Here we see another dimension of the conceptual coherence of theism.

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Blog Tour for The Making of an Atheist

By Jim Spiegel

In the coming weeks, a number of bloggers will be posting reviews or interviews with me about my book, The Making of an Atheist.  Some of these have already begun to appear.  Joe Gorra interviews me at the EPS Blog, and Frank Turk has posted a very thoughtful review over at Evangel, the First Things blog.  Also, Chris Reese has posted a two-part interview and my responses to some readers’ questions at Cloud of Witnesses.  The entire schedule is below.  These are all superb blogs, most of which feature content related to apologetics and/or issues related to faith and culture.  I invite you to check them out.

Blog Name Blogger Posting Date
EPS Blog Joe Gorra February 10
Cloud of Witnesses Chris Reese February 14-15
Evangel Frank Turk February 17
Apologetics.com Rich Park February 22-24
Truthbomb Apologetics Chad Gross February 25-27
Triablogue Peter Pike March 1-3
Apologetics 315 Brian Auten March 4-6
Mike Austin’s blog Mike Austin March 8-10
The Seventh Sola Joel Griffith March 11-13
EPS Blog Steve Cowan March 15-17
TeamPyro Frank Turk TBD
Doug Geivett’s blog Doug Geivett March 22-24
Say Hello to my Little Friend Glenn Peoples March 25-27
PleaseConvinceMe.com Jim Wallace March 29-31
Just Thinking William Dicks April 1-3
Oversight of Souls Ray Van Neste April 5-7
Constructive Curmudgeon Doug Groothuis April 8-10
A-Team Blog Roger Overton April 12-14
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Blog Interview and Book Reviews About The Making of an Atheist

By Jim Spiegel

Several blogs have recently featured reviews or interviews with me about my book, The Making of an Atheist, including the blog of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, Cloud of Witnesses and Exo Tays Parembolays. 

So far, most responses to the book have been enthusiastically positive, though there have been some negative comments (from folks who have yet to read the book!), suggesting that I commit an ad hominem fallacy in claiming that atheism results from self-deception and immorality.  This would be true if the point of my book was to argue that atheism is false.  That’s not the book’s aim at all.  Rather, my purpose is to give an explanatory accountof the origins of atheistic belief.  That’s quite a different matter, and my account actually parallels the attempts of such atheists as Feuerbach and Freud to explain theistic belief.  Atheists typically applaud their accounts and aren’t inclined to accuse them of ad hominem reasoning.  Perhaps its too much to expect that they would show me the same courtesy.

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Wise Stewards: A Book Review

By Jim Spiegel

I have read my share of books about family and parenting over the years.  Some have been worth my while; others have not.  But even the best of the ones I’ve read left me unsatisfied, mainly because they failed to probe foundational moral issues related to parenting and family life.  So it was especially satisfying to read Michael Austin’s Wise Stewards (Kregel, 2009) a splendid treatment of, as the subtitle says, the philosophical foundations of Christian parenting.  Not only does Austin explore the moral dimensions of parenting, but he does so in a way that is practical, even-handed, and both philosophically and biblically informed.

Early in his study Austin considers some foundational questions regarding the essence of parenthood itself.  What is it that establishes the parental tie to a child?  Austin discusses several lines of response to this question—the biological account, the causal account, and the social construct account.  He considers the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, introducing readers to some leading proponents of each along the way.  Wisely, Austin refuses to throw his lot in entirely with any of these views but rather acknowledges the insights of all three as well as their weaknesses.  In the end, he emphasizes the moral-social dimension of parenthood and the critical role of stewardship that mothers and fathers must play in the lives of their children:  “The aspects of parenthood that have primary value include helping children to become flourishing individuals within a loving parent-child relationship” (43).

With regard to the parental role, there is a wide variety of perspectives among philosophers, from Aristotle’s ownership view to the more contemporary child liberation movement.  Austin argues that a Christian view of the matter would fall somewhere between these extremes, affirming both the parents’ duty to guide and direct their children while also recognizing that parents do not own their children.  This balanced perspective is captured in the concept of stewardship.  A steward is someone who cares for something that belongs to someone else.  They exercise a certain authority, but only because it has been granted to them by another.  This is precisely the situation with parents, Austin notes:  “Parents are responsible for managing what God entrusts to them—the lives of their children.  The authority is temporary, as they must acknowledge that their children are ultimately God’s” (68).  This is a simple point and one with which few Christians would disagree.  But the implications are significant for an ethic of parenting, as Austin demonstrates throughout the book.

Like any significant human endeavor, parenting has a telos—an end, purpose or goal.  And, as Austin observes, the telos of Christian parenting is perhaps best captured by the Hebrew term shalom.  The concept suggests peace, wholeness, harmony, and integrity.  As parents, we should strive to raise our children to embody shalom.  This means we should train them to be virtuous people, both intellectually and morally.  In the book’s fourth chapter Austin discusses several “key virtues for Christian families,” which include humility, forgiveness, patience, compassion, and frugality, as well as the so-called (by Aquinas) theological virtues of faith, hope and love.

Austin’s illuminating, not to mention motivational, discussion of virtue lays the perfect foundation for his extensive discussion of practical parenting issues in chapter five.  He tackles such thorny matters as child discipline, sports involvement, educational approaches, and the challenges of consumerism.  With each issue, Austin manages to be informative and balanced, acknowledging the latitude Christian parents enjoy in managing their households and rearing their children, while also reaffirming the importance of making all of one’s parenting choices in light of the moral formation of their children and the end-in-view of shalom.

The final chapter of Wise Stewards explores even more controversial issues, specifically those related to reproductive technologies.  Here, as elsewhere in the book, Austin brings a carefully integrated theological and philosophical analysis, resulting in wise and tempered counsel on everything from in–vitro fertilization to gene therapy to anonymous gamete donation.

At a time when the moral challenges to faithful Christian living are greater than ever, the need for Christian ethical discussions that are smart and principled, yet also winsome and compassionate, could not be greater.  Refreshingly, Mike Austin’s Wise Stewards is all of these things and provides a welcome alternative to contemporary Christian parenting books that  amount to “how to” manuals.  While many current parenting texts are essentially (not so well) disguised applications of particular psychological theories where moral-theological themes and values are underdeveloped at best, Austin’s Wise Stewards offers a much-needed corrective.  He reminds us that parenting is not only a deeply moral-spiritual endeavor, but one of the most important endeavors of all.